As I’ve mentioned in the past, I volunteer with my local Family Shelter, and every winter, we have an all-day “retreat” (we don’t go anywhere) where we get additional intensive training. One of our sessions this year was on suicide prevention and suicidality.
One thing that our instructor (the head of a psychiatric center) mentioned was that being a survivor of suicide”being the immediate relative of someone who commits suicide”is considered a trauma, and such survivors often develop PTSD.
I think this lends additional insight into Don and how most of Seasons 2 & 3 played out, following his discovery that Adam committed suicide at the end of Season 1. He sank and sank, he reacted and he didn’t sleep. He acted like an addict. And finally, when Betty says “Adam,” he jumps like a scared kitten, and then, probably for the first time, weeps.
One more piece of the puzzle.
8 Responses to “Trauma”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Is there any significance to the animated opening credit sequence, where it seems Don is plunging to his death from a high office building?
I always wondered if there was a clue to the where the series ends up in that sequence.
Bruce, Matt Weiner discusses the opening titles here.
Timing really is everything.
For the first time in ages, I rewatched "5G" last night. There is so much in it.
From the moment Adam shows up, Don is literally afraid of his own shadow. Even before his brother turns up, he knows something is wrong: someone is on to him. He's skittish, distracted: in the office, and even with Midge.
We also see something happen to Don in that episode that never happens again, with any other adult in his life: Adam embraces him, for the first and last time. (Women embrace Don, but in different ways and for different reasons.)
Adam throws his arms around his brother and hugs the hell out of him. And Don can't feel it, can't let himself give in. He needs their last interaction to be about that money on the table. He needs that escape, so much more than he can imagine Adam needing their embrace.
Don is that badly broken, that scared.
I contend that Don's experience of trauma goes far back, long before his brother's suicide. That line — "I couldn't go back there"? His relief at the deaths of those who had never been his parents? That could be contempt, but it points more directly to trauma.
And then there's the last thing Don says to him. "Everything's gonna be fine."
Flash forward to this season. To abandonment. Who's saying what to whom?
We already know he was abused. I think witnessing his father's death was additional trauma, and then, of course, witnessing Lt. Donald Draper's death. This guy definitely has wounds.
Great insight in the post. Although I am trained as psychologist by profession I am so consumed by each episode of Mad Men that I need to re-watch them many to times to catch all the character's expression, emotions, and mental state. 5G is by far one of my favorite episodes because it tells us so much about Don Draper. The first four episodes we were introduced to Don and to all the characters in SC and Ossing. I felt that 5G was the first Don focused episode that set so much in motion for season 1 thru 3.
Don lives by the mantra "move forward" as he advised Peggy "this never happened, it will shock you how much it didn't happen". That mental state is the reason he can pathologically lie and cheat. He can look his wife in the eye and deny having an affair because he believes it. Don is an island, he is a man to himself, who trusts no one but himself and values no one but himself. With Adam's death came the brutal realization that his actions do effect and hurt others. But Don buries Adam and his guilt in a shoe box and does not come to any self awareness till his wife calls him liar to his face. I my opinion Betty calling Don out on his lies in a "Night to Remember" is Don's turning point, because from that point on he tries to discover who he is and who he wants to be.
(enough psycho babble from me, I hope it sounded coherent considering I'm falling asleep at my computer)
Very coherent. When Don cried, I immediately thought to myself "He's sick with guilt and remorse over Adam."
What's interesting about that box is that it came from Adam. Yet Don didn't burn it, as he did the photo, after he learned that Adam died. He kept it. Buried it, in the desk drawer: but he did keep it.
This is what Don does with love, I am beginning to see.
You wonder if, going forward, he’s going to tell any woman he might be serious about exactly what happened in his past (including the stuff with Adam). You’d think he would, knowing how badly he got burned by telling Betty the truth too late. Of course, there are potential legal ramifications to his coming 100% clean — what if they break up and she uses the information against him? — but he’s seen what happens when there are big secrets. It never turns out well.
Looking at the S1 episodes again, especially the Don/Betty interactions in Ladies’ Room, was a real eye-opener. She really knew nothing about him — she actually asked him if he had a “nanny” and said she’d like to “thank” his parents for how he turned out! So he hadn’t even told her that they died, not even after being together more than six years! That’s a pretty serious chunk of information not to know about your spouse. But I guess if he could tell himself “it never happened,” he could rationalize that she need never find out. Ouch.